


His Other Scully

by Living_Underground



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Mulder and Scully - Freeform, Mulder and a cat, a different Scully, because sometimes you just need a feline companion, but not that Scully, but this one purrs, dana scully definitely purred at some point, its a cat, okay, still blue eyed, still ginger, to make it through the bad days, who am I kidding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:22:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23882947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Living_Underground/pseuds/Living_Underground
Summary: A cat adopts Mulder.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	His Other Scully

**Author's Note:**

> My cat was sat on my lap, so I wrote this instead of getting on with my uni work. I mean, I could have done my uni work with the cat on my lap, but I wanted to write this instead. 
> 
> My cat is very talkative and over-friendly, she will talk to anyone. Everyone in the area knows her, and even the non-cat people will talk to her. My neighbour hates cats, but will still sit and talk to my cat when she wanders into her kitchen and starts chatting away in her cat language. Everyone in my class gets excited when she wanders into frame during our online classes.

‘Scully, get off the fridge,’ he stared at her, locking eyes with her blue gaze as she blatantly ignored him. ‘Seriously? Okay, fine, stay there, see if I care. You won’t get food though.’

She growled, hopping down at the mention of food, and he sighed as he took a tin of tuna from the cupboard. ‘I should probably get you some proper food at some point if you insist on sticking around.’ She butted her head against his hand as he emptied the tuna onto a dish on the floor. He ran his fingers over her ginger fur, scratching her back and standing up with a groan.

He didn’t want a cat. She had just kind of adopted him. She’d been hanging around outside his building for weeks, nobody seeming to have any clue who she belonged to when he asked around. And then one late evening, in the pouring rain, she’d followed him in from outside, slinking past as he opened the door to his building and shaking her wet fur out. He’d sighed as she tailed him up to apartment 42. ‘Shoo. Go on. You’re not even meant to be in here.’

She’d just stared at him, blue eyes imploring him to let her in.

‘Look, I’ve had a bad day. Get outta here,’ he’s shaken his head, slipping the key into the lock and squeezing through the door, shutting it before she could get inside. He’d run a hand through his hair, shucked his coat off and dropped down onto his couch. He was tired. Fed up of work. Over the previous year, he had gotten used to working with a partner, gotten used to the Mona Lisa smile and sceptical eyes peering at him from across his desk. He had liked having her to work with, liked having someone to challenge him and ground him – she hadn’t held him back like he had expected her to. And then they were shut down, and he was stuck listening to wiretaps in a dingy little room.

A scratching at his door led to him toeing a shoe off and throwing it, stopping the noise with a mewl.

He had hoped that was the end of it, that she had gone and found someone else to pester.

Clearly, he was not blessed with luck. She was sat outside his door when he left for work the next morning, following him downstairs and disappearing outside. When he arrived back that night, smelling of sewer, she was back on the steps, as if waiting for him. He hissed, and she hissed back. ‘I don’t like cats.’ She had looked back up at him as if to say she didn’t like humans, and he conceded, letting her in once again, but still not letting her into his apartment itself. He did dig out a tin of sardines from the back of his cupboard and emptied them out onto a plate, leaving it outside his door.

They had progressed in that daily routine, occasionally exchanging a few words, or a moment of physical contact as she brushed against his leg or he crouched down to scratch behind her ear.

He started to talk to her more. Telling her about his day. Giving her a rundown of all the moments he wished he could have shared with Scully, wished he could have gotten her opinion on, but didn’t want to bother her with something so trivial.

And then Duane Barry and Skyland Mountain happened. Scully was gone. As he looked around at his life he noted that, given how much impact this one person who had been so integral to the last twelve months of his life had had, there wasn’t any evidence for it. He had nothing of hers, other than the cross around his neck, to suggest they had even crossed paths. The cat seemed to know, when he came home, that he needed comfort. Rather than wait at the boundary of his apartment, she had run in before him and perched on the arm of the couch. ‘Scram, now.’ It was half-hearted though; he didn’t want to be alone. So he slumped down next to her and burrowed his fingers into the ginger mane around her face. He’d cried as she purred, burying his face into her side. She smelt of cat and outside and he realised just how much he missed the smell of lavender.

He hadn’t meant to name her, but she’d started hanging out in his apartment more often, and he’d been talking aloud to an invisible Scully more often, and she just started associating the name with herself. So Scully the cat became his roommate. He spent a fair amount of time wondering if her namesake would have been a good roommate. Decided that wasn’t a train of thought he wanted to follow.

Mulder wasn’t _entirely_ certain Scully the human would be overly pleased that, in memory of her, he had named a cat after her, but there was a growing part of him that felt she wouldn’t be coming back to complain. Besides, she should be proud; Scully the cat was clever, a good conversationalist and hardly ever harassed his fish.

He grew more and more fond and attached to her: with an increasing sense of dissatisfaction growing around his work, he was relieved to have someone to come home to, someone to remind him to eat. Yes, she got fur all over his Afghan, and he frequently found her sleeping in places that she wasn’t supposed to (boxes of case files being her favourite) but she was a comforting presence, she made it feel less like he was talking to himself. Comments about spinsters and crazy-cat-ladies cross his mind, but he chose to ignore them. Animal companionship was good for the soul.

And then…then Scully was returned. His Scully. His human Scully. Left in a hospital. He spent a week trying to find who left her there, catching moments of sleep in awkward plastic chairs and under his desk. He didn’t go home, lived out of his overnight bag as he camped out wherever he could so he was close when she woke, so he could go in and smile and joke and hold her hand and pretend that he had been fine when in fact he had been falling to pieces without her, without this woman he had only been working with for a year.

In his worry for his partner, and his anger at whoever had taken her, he’d forgotten about the Scully at home. It was only when he came home for a proper shower, instead of a quick one taken at the gym, that he remembered the dependent waiting for tuna. But she was gone, out the crack in the window he usually left open for her.

He left the window open for another week, waiting to see if she would come back, but aside from the few extra cans of tuna he had bought, and a patch of fur on his Afghan, it was as if she had never been there at all.

As his Scully came back to him, he wondered if the cat had actually been there at all, and not just a figment of his imagination.

**Author's Note:**

> Just, honestly, this is a tribute to my cat, because she has gotten me through a lot these last sixteen years and she's getting old and it makes me sad because I worry about her. She's been such a comfort during lockdown. 
> 
> I really hope you are all doing okay and staying safe! Give any kitties (and puppies, I'm not picky, just animals in general) a hug from me, please?!


End file.
